Old Sins (43 page)

And she slammed the door and ran into the house.

Next night, a little pale, but dry-eyed and composed, she ate dinner alone with her father.

‘All right, darling? You don’t seem quite yourself.’

‘Yes, I’m fine, Daddy.’

‘I hear you were out last night. Where did you go?’

‘Oh, to Rosie’s house.’

‘I see. How is Rosie?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘Good.’

‘Daddy –’

‘Yes?’

‘Daddy, I don’t know if I ought to tell you this, but it’s awfully exciting, I think David and Mummy are going to get married. It would be perfectly lovely for me, I would have a proper family again. What do you think about it?’

Two days later David Sassoon, rushing out of his office mid morning to meet Eliza Thetford at the airport, and to tell her that for the first time in his life he felt ready to commit himself and wanted to marry her, saw a newly delivered letter on his desk marked Private and Confidential. It was from Julian, and it offered him the position of design director of the company worldwide at virtually double his present salary, with immediate effect. The job was based in New York.

The letter finished by saying that David’s bachelor status had been a minor but important factor in helping Julian to reach the decision, given that the job would entail a great deal of travelling, and in the first year at least a crushing workload.

Los Angeles, 1970–71

IT REALLY WAS
only a little lump. Lee, feeling it again and again, morning after morning, convincing herself it had grown no bigger, promised herself that next time she had to see the doctor about anything important, she would just mention it and then he could assure her it was nothing, and then she could forget about it. She couldn’t spare either the time or the money to go about something that really was absolutely unimportant. Mr Phillips was a very busy man, and he was so extremely good about her being away when she had to take Miles to the dentist or watch him play baseball, or go and see his teacher for one of the interminable chats about his outstanding abilities and his equally outstanding laziness. Just thinking about Miles and his laziness made Lee feel tired and limp herself. Not that she would call it laziness, exactly; more an absolute refusal to put his mind to anything that did not engage it. He had not been
known to write an essay more than one page long, he never read anything more challenging than the sports pages in the newspapers and the
Little League Newsletter
, he regarded history with contempt and science with amusement; he gave the occasional nod in the direction of languages and had a gift for mimicry that made his accent in both Spanish and French virtually flawless; but when it came to maths he set himself to his books and his homework with a ferocious determination, he was always not only top of the class but top by a very long way, and had rarely been known to get a mark lower than ninety per cent, grade less than A, and for some reason he also worked very hard at geography. When pressed by his mother as to the reason he would fix her with his dancing, slightly insolent dark blue eyes and say, ‘There’s a point to it.’

‘Yes, but Miles, there’s also a point to being able to string more than three sentences together on a page,’ Lee would say.

‘Not really,’ he would say, ‘what’s the telephone for?’

‘But Miles, you have to write letters in business and things like that.’

‘Mom, I don’t intend to go into business. Not the kind that needs letters writing anyway.’

After a few more protests, Lee would give up, too tired, too busy, too weary of the battle to pursue it any longer.

She was very often – more and more frequently, in fact – very tired. She found looking after Miles, trying to bring him up on her own, and earning a living for them both and keeping the house nice, extremely demanding. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day.

They had stayed in the house purely on the strength of Hugo’s generosity. She had hated taking money from him, but there had been simply no one else to turn to. Dean’s life insurance had been useless, since he had committed suicide, and she and Miles would have been destitute. Had there been no Miles she would have slept on the beach gladly, along with the other vagrants, rather than ask Hugo for a dime, but there was Miles, and now that Dean had died she had dared to delve into her subconscious and acknowledge that not only was Miles a burden she could and should lay on Hugo, but the responsibility for Dean’s death stood at least in some part at his door as well.

She had hated telling him, hated contacting him, but she had felt, in her unutterable grief and guilt and loneliness, driven to him; it was the first time in ten years she had ever dialled the number in New York, and even then she had rung off three times as the phone was answered before asking for him.

And then he had not been there; the woman had said she would take a message, but she didn’t know when he would get it, and then when Lee said it was very very urgent, and was he in England, the woman had said grudgingly, well, she could pass on the message to another number, in New York, but she couldn’t give the number to Lee.

‘Please,’ said Lee desperately, ‘please give it to me, I am an old friend,’ (urging the words out of herself with huge, terrible difficulty) and the woman said she didn’t care if she was the President himself, she wasn’t allowed to give the number. ‘Well, give him a message then, please – please,’ said Lee.

‘OK, OK,’ said the woman, and Lee could hear her raising her eyebrows and shifting impatiently on her chair. ‘I said I would. What’ll I say?’

‘Oh,’ said Lee, ‘say just could Hugo Dashwood please call Lee Wilburn urgently.’ And she put the phone down feeling more alone than ever, sure that Hugo must be thousands of miles away in England with Alice and that even if he wasn’t he would make little effort to help her. And indeed why should he, she reflected, when she had been so persistently hostile, so harsh to him for the past ten years, refusing him any kind of friendliness, crushing his overtures to Miles, blocking his access to the heart of her family.

But she was wrong, and he did; he was with her in twenty-four hours, gentle, supportive, comforting. He booked into a hotel (to confound the gossips) and visited her daily. He helped her with the funeral arrangements, he sorted through her papers, he checked on her financial affairs.

‘You’re going to need help, Lee,’ he said on the third day, looking up from a sheaf of papers. ‘Dean has left virtually nothing. There’s a small pension. That’s all.’

‘So what shall I do?’ she said, fearful, tearstained, shredding Kleenex after Kleenex into her lap, looking at him in a kind of helpless panic.

‘Take some money from me.’

‘No. I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t. We’re not your responsibility, and besides, you don’t have any money.’

‘You are my responsibility, and I do have some money.’

‘But you told Dean –’

‘What?’

‘That things weren’t going well for you. That you were having a difficult time.’

‘I was lying.’

‘But why?’

‘Lee, use your common sense. Dean was not exactly a success, was he?’

‘He was too,’ she said, instinctively indignant, defending the Dean who was far beyond humiliation.

‘Well, all right,’ he said, ‘maybe he was. But not such a success as I am. I didn’t want to rub his nose in that. I was his friend. Friends don’t do that sort of thing. Bad form. In England anyway.’ He was smiling gently.

She looked at him scornfully. ‘They do other things that are bad form, I gather. Sleep with other men’s wives.’

‘Look, Lee,’ said Hugo, suddenly angry. ‘I know I did wrong. But so did you. And you’ve done precious little to let me help put it right. So just shut up. And let me do it now. You need me, Lee. Don’t drive me away.’

She looked at him, through the blur of fresh tears, and felt remorseful. It was true. He would have helped. He had done everything he could, everything she had allowed him to, keeping in touch, giving extravagant presents to Miles, making sure she was all right, all down the years.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re right. And it was mostly my fault. I shouldn’t have blamed you so much.’

‘Yes you should,’ he said, patting the seat beside him on the couch. ‘But you can stop now. Come here and let me hold you. It’s all right,’ he added as she stiffened in fearful wariness. ‘I’m not going to seduce you. I think we’ve both lived well past that. I just think you need some arms round you.’

And she had crawled into his arms, and lain there, crying for a long time, and he had stroked her hair and kissed the top of
her head, and soothed and gentled her, and in the end she did feel a little better.

‘Hugo, how will I ever get through this? Forgive myself? Live with knowing what I did to him?’

‘Oh,’ he said, and there was an odd expression in his eyes. ‘Time will do it for you. It is amazing what one does learn to live with. Come to terms with. Forget. No, not forget, but allow to fade. You will never get over it. Not in the way you mean. But a day will come when you will be able to remember Dean with a kind of happiness, and to know that you gave him a lot of happiness too. Don’t let yourself forget that, Lee. You made him very happy for eighteen years. That’s a long time, and it’s a lot to do for someone.’

‘But what an end to it. What a terrible, terrible end.’

‘Yes, but at least there was never any suspicion, any pain, before. That would have been much worse. Remember the coroner’s verdict. Temporarily deranged. It was very temporary. Hang on to that. Death isn’t so bad. Not when it’s over.’

She looked at him and smiled shakily. ‘How do you know? Have you been there?’

‘No. But I’ve watched people who have.’

‘When?’

‘In the war.’

‘Ah.’

‘Now then,’ he said, suddenly brisk. ‘Miles can’t stay with the Wainwrights for ever. He needs to be with you. When are you going to get him back?’

‘Not for another day or two, Hugo. I can’t cope.’

‘All right. But don’t leave it too long.’

‘How – how long can you stay?’

‘Oh, another forty-eight hours. Then I have to get back. Incidentally, Lee, I know you had to tell the coroner you were having an affair, but are you going to tell anyone else?’

‘Why?’ she said, suddenly hostile again. ‘Are you afraid you’ll get landed with it?’

‘No,’ he said with a great weariness, ‘I don’t give a damn if I get landed with it. I just want to know. So that I know what to say. To Mrs Wainwright and Sue Forrest and your nice friend Amy. I’ll go and hire a poster site if you like and write in letters
three feet high: . . . “Hugo Dashwood is responsible for Dean Wilburn’s death”. . . . If that will make you feel any better. But I need to know what you want me to say. And do.’ He sighed.

Lee was filled with remorse again.

‘Hugo, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I – I guess I’m not quite myself.’

‘On the contrary,’ he said, smiling down at her and wiping a fresh rivulet of tears from her face with his handkerchief, ‘I think, on the evidence of the past ten years, you are being absolutely yourself. Your awkward, stroppy self.’

‘But I’m not usually awkward and stroppy. It’s only – only –’

‘With me?’

‘Well – yes.’ For the first time that day she smiled. He smiled back.

‘Tell you what we both need. A drink. Do you want some of that disgusting beer of yours?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Do you have any wine in the house?’

‘No. Sorry. Lots of bourbon.’

‘I hate the stuff. But it’ll do.’

He fetched them both drinks. They sat outside on the patio looking at the ocean and the pier. Lee sighed.

‘In answer to your question, Hugo, I haven’t told anyone I was having an affair, but most people have put two and two together. They’ve assumed that’s why he did it. I think I’m going to be a pretty unpopular lady.’

Hugo raised his glass. ‘To the prettiest unpopular lady I know. Don’t worry, darling. People have short memories.’

He was right. She had a bad six months, and then gradually, in the light of her blameless behaviour, the absolute lack of any kind of lover appearing in her life, her patent desire to look after Miles and bring him up well on her own, in spite of her difficulties, people forgave her whatever they imagined there was to forgive. And Hugo was right, and she did begin to remember Dean more happily and to feel she had done at least a few things right. She did not, as she had feared, go mad with remorse. And life did begin to seem a little more worth living.

She managed to get a job quite easily. She took a quick brush-up course in shorthand typing (paid for by Hugo), and
very swiftly found herself working for Irving Phillips, a litigation lawyer who was building himself up a practice in Beverly Hills with impressive speed. He was only five years out of law school, but ruthlessly ambitious and riding high on California’s ever-growing wave of aggressive litigation. He had interviewed Lee and a long line of glamorous twenty-two-year-olds who were far more decorative and impressive than she was, Lee had thought despairingly as she watched the one preceding her leave his office and the one following her go into it, but he had hired her without hesitation.

‘I want someone who’s got a reason to work,’ he said to her simply, ‘someone who needs the job, and isn’t just waiting for some man to come along and keep her.’

‘You do realize,’ said Lee anxiously, emboldened into honesty by his confiding manner, ‘that I’ve got a little boy. I may have to leave early sometimes, not often, but sometimes, to watch him play in a match or a school play or something. I don’t want to come into your firm under false pretences.’

‘Lee Wilburn,’ Amy Meredith had said when she heard this, ‘you’re mad. Out of your head. You’re lucky he didn’t show you the door then and there.’

‘Well, he didn’t,’ said Lee, ‘he actually said he liked the fact I’d been so honest, and it made him feel more sure than ever he wanted to hire me. I said I’d work early, late, any time, to make up any leave I took, and I said I’d take work home, and he said, well, that was just fine.’